


Wherein Pike has coffee and Jim takes a nap

by kayliemalinza



Series: Rambleverse [40]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Kayliemalinza's Rambleverse, Pike's Reclaimed Captaincy (Rambleverse Timeline), Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-07
Updated: 2010-12-07
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:48:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>LJ user leftarrow prompted: "Ok, I would like 'coffee' as the prompt and . . . a quiet morning during the first year of Enterprise's mission with Pike as captain and Kirk as an officer. "</p><p>Teaser: "Here you go, sir," Jim says, setting his PADD of flawlessly completed shift reports on a careful tilt, leaning against Pike's stack of other reports because Jim has to be special.</p><p>Pike rubs his eyes and picks it up immediately. See? Special.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wherein Pike has coffee and Jim takes a nap

Pike is sitting up at his desk when Jim drags his ass in from Gamma shift, and even though Jim feels like he's been laid out flat on the deck and pummeled with a few dozen rubber mallets (and he knows exactly what that feels like; don't ask) Pike looks pretty perky. He has a mug of coffee on the desk in front of him, exactly five inches adjacent to a stack of PADDS, which means that Pike has not touched either since Luke set them down.

Pike must have been keeping on top of his paperwork this week; when he does poorly, Luke sets the mug as many as fourteen inches away. Jim thinks this is terribly counterproductive--if a man is sluggish, denying him coffee isn't going to help at all--but Luke insists that he is well versed in his duties, sir, and Commander Kirk would be so kind as to remember that Luke, who is merely an ensign (though he'd be lieutenant by now if Pike weren't postponing the examination until he can find a suitable replacement), would never dream of questioning Commander Kirk's methods, sir, though of course he very possibly _could_. Sir.

Jim decided to leave the discussion at this point and bask in the particular sweet joy of seeing one's subordinates grow in confidence, not that Luke was all that lacking to begin with. Still, Jim is now a genuine commissioned ranking officer on a flagship, not some snot-nosed cadet perpetually on the verge of being expelled (not that he ever had a snotty nose. Bloody, maybe, but not snotty.)

Anyway. Luke's methods seem to work just fine because Pike is always up to date on his paperwork, and sometimes politely offers to loan Luke to Jim to see if that will help him keep up with _his_ paperwork, but then Jim points out that Pike would be so disappointed at not being able to scold Jim himself, which always gets a chuckle. Pike tends to accompany those chuckles with an evil glint in his eye but what else is new.

Luckily none of that is a factor this morning, because Gamma shift was so incredibly tedious that Jim has completed all his paperwork for the week and filled in some gaps from last week, so Luke should be totally in love with him right now, or at least offer to get him a Danish. The canteen has been putting out new flavors this week and Jim hasn't gotten to try the boysenberry yet.

"Here you go, sir," Jim says, setting his PADD of flawlessly completed shift reports on a careful tilt, leaning against Pike's stack of other reports because Jim has to be special.

Pike rubs his eyes and picks it up immediately. See? Special.

"Any news on that anomaly?" Pike asks, already flicking through the report.

"Ensign Chekov thinks so," Jim says. "The scanners collected information on the pulsation rate. It's potentially of some scientific importance, but nothing the bridge needs to be concerned with." He pauses and smiles a little bit. "Chekov thinks he can write a whole article about it."

"Good for him," Pike mumbles. "What is this with the overflow on Deck 12?"

"Uh, still waiting to hear back from Engineering on that," Jim says. "Something to do with the hydrogen mix."

Pike raises an eyebrow. "There's no danger of explosion, is there?"

"I'm going to go see Scotty at 0900," Jim says. "Unless you want to take the meeting."

"No, you're already briefed on the situation," Pike says. "I'm not worried about Scotty overlooking any danger to the ship, but remind him that Starfleet Command does look at these stats. The closer he can get the egress quantities to normal, the better." He gets out the stylus and makes some notations. "Don't hesitate to have the data compilation team massage the numbers a little to make them look better. That's their job."

Normally this would spark a philosophical discussion about the extent to which fudging the statistics is not an ethical quandary, including the typical thought-experiments about cases in which stats-squashing is morally obligatory and the ostensibly specious counterargument that the evil of bureaucracy negates any ethical concerns (that last one is Pike's favorite; Jim still hasn't figured out if he's being serious or not.)

This morning, though, Jim just doesn't feel up to a circular discussion. He nudges Pike's wheelchair out from beside the sofa (Pike must have used it last night; sometimes he disengages the prosthetic nerve bypass system because it makes him too twitchy to sleep) and settles himself into it slowly, like he's old. "Yessir," he says. "I'll give them a heads-up." He yawns. "Might even get one of the committee to accompany me to the meeting."

"Good idea," Pike says. He sets the PADD down and leans back in his chair. "Tired?" he asks.

Jim shrugs. "Just typical end-of-shift," he says. "I'll be fine once I get some sleep."

"Make sure you do, because I'm putting you in Engineering tonight," Pike says.

"Who's gonna be on the bridge, then?" Jim asks.

"I think I might just cover it myself," Pike says, and how he manages to make that sound simultaneously guileless and scheming, Jim hasn't quite figured out. "But don't mention it to any of the crew; I want my presence to be a surprise."

Jim smiles and rests his eyes a while. "Surprise away," he mumbles. "My people are straight-edge now." His people also cough and mutter 'narc' under their breath when he walks in but whatever. They've never been called into the ready room for a patented Pike Lecture and he's going to keep it that way.

Pike is quiet for a while, tapping away at the PADD like he's scrolling down on a numbers-heavy report. The white noise in the room expands, overwhelms him like he's about to fall asleep, and that's probably bad form during a post-shift briefing, informal though it may be, but Jim really can't--

"--get him something from the mess, would you? Keep it simple," Pike is saying.

Jim sniffs loudly through his nose and uses the exhale to say, "Bozzenber." It's too much trouble to open his eyes all the way but he's pretty sure that grey blocky smudge is Pike's desk and in front of it is Luke, black hair and red shirt and black pants blurring together like layers of cake and frosting. Chocolate cake and sherry frosting. No, cherry, though sherry'd give it a nice kick, if done right. The important thing is that the cake is chocolate.

"Beg pardon?" the Luke-Cake says.

Jim grimaces. It was hard enough to get out that one word, and now he has to do it again?

Luckily, Pike comes to the rescue: "I believe Commander Kirk would like a boysenberry Danish," he says.

 _You're my hero,_ Jim thinks.

There's some more chit-chat between Luke and Pike, but Jim can't hear it over the rustle as he draws up his legs to curl up sideways in the wheelchair. The armrests cut coldly into his knees and his feet hang off the edge, but it's worth it for the comfy parts in between.


End file.
